According to Levante-EMV, a Valencia-based media outlet, Forensic Police agents conducted an eight-hour search at the Ministry of Equality last Monday, just before the resignation of department head and Consell vice president Mónica Oltra. The operation was conducted in collaboration with the newspaper group that included Levante-EMV. The warrant to execute the search was issued by the 15th Investigation Court of Valencia, which had opened the case on 18 June 2021, to determine whether officials within the Ministry of Equality neglected to address complaints related to a minor who had been abused by an educator, the former partner of Oltra.
Difficult succession in Compromís
During the extended search, forensic officers carefully reviewed the file concerning the minor’s case, which dates back to 8 August 2017. The matter was initially a case filed by the Valencia Court’s second division, which had previously convicted the educator of harassment. The process had been deemed “out of court” and later there was a lawsuit that questioned the credibility of the minor’s witness statements. Debates emerged about who authorized the opening of the investigation. Officials from the Equality Department asserted in their statements that the minister did not issue the inaugural order. Yet Oltra herself raised questions in a statement to reporters on March 7, asserting that she had commissioned the report and directed staff to review it. She said she asked the General Manager and the Deputy General Manager to find out what was happening in the case. In later testimony before the TSJ, Oltra indicated that certain expressions may have been influenced by a sense of injustice and the feeling of helplessness she perceived when she believed the accusation was being used to instrumentalize a crime, a claim that prompted questions about the necessity and scope of the review.
In Oltra’s written defense, she recalled that the senior officials under investigation had maintained that the information file in question had been opened at the initiative of the Director General for Children and Adolescents. She cited a meeting with the Executive Vice President for Children on 8 August 2021 as part of that explanation.